John Sheardown, key player in rescue of diplomats from Iran, dead at 88

Andrew Duffy, Ottawa Citizen12.30.2012

World War II vet John Sheardown, 85, (R) talks with former Canadian Ambassador to Iran, Ken Taylor.Christopher Pike
/ Ottawa Citizen

Zena Sheardown, wife of World War II vet John Sheardown, 85, at her home in Ottawa, Ont., Jul. 30, 2010. Sheardown was one of the key Canadian figures in the legendary rescue of Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and a recipient of the Order of Canada for his role is waiting for Veterans Affairs to decide if he is eligible for a veterans nursing home.Christopher Pike
/ Ottawa Citizen

World War II vet John Sheardown, 85, seen in a photo provided by his wife Zena, (not pictured), in Ottawa, Ont., Jul. 30, 2010. Sheardown was one of the key Canadian figures in the legendary rescue of Americans from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and a recipient of the Order of Canada for his role is waiting for Veterans Affairs to decide if he is eligible for a veterans nursing home.Christopher Pike
/ Ottawa Citizen

World War II vet John Sheardown, 85, seen in a photo.Christopher Pike
/ Ottawa Citizen

With those words to an endangered U.S. diplomat in November 1979, John Sheardown, then Canada’s top immigration official in Iran, launched what would become known as “the Canadian Caper.”

For the next three months, Sheardown and Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor sheltered six U.S. diplomats in their private homes.

The six Americans were spirited out of Iran in January 1980 with the help of the Central Intelligence Agency in a top-secret mission, dramatized in the 2012 Ben Affleck movie Argo.

Sheardown, a Second World War bomber pilot and an Order of Canada recipient, died Sunday at The Ottawa Hospital. He was 88.

Sheardown, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had been living at the Perley and Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre.

“He was a true Canadian hero but he never took credit for anything,” his son, Robin Sheardown, said in an interview Monday.

“He was very lighthearted, but he never cringed from danger. And he always wanted to help other people.”

Sheardown was an immigration officer with the Canadian Embassy in Tehran when militant students stormed the U.S. Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979, taking 52 Americans hostage during the Iranian Revolution.

The students demanded that the deposed Shah of Iran be returned from the U.S., where he was being treated for cancer.

Six Americans who were in other buildings escaped the hostage-taking; they were initially aided by the British and Swedish embassies. Then one of those on the run, Robert Anders, contacted Sheardown, an old friend.

Sheardown invited Anders and his colleagues to stay at the home he shared with his wife, Zena. Four would stay with Sheardown, two with Ambassador Taylor.

The Sheardowns lived alone in a large house in Tehran; they had an Iranian gardener and a Filipino maid. The maid came to be involved in the deception, but not the gardener.

“We were under surveillance,” Sheardown once told an interviewer. “We had tanks at one end of the street and a fellow that walked up and down. They were always suspicious, they’d search the car.”

Sheardown had to buy groceries in several different stores each day so as not to arouse suspicion about the amount of food he was bringing home, all the while maintaining regular contact with Iranian officials.

Every evening, the Sheardowns and their four house guests would have a formal dinner, then retire to the den to listen to U.S. Armed Forces Radio.

Mark Lijek was one of the U.S. diplomats who hid in Sheardown’s house for three months before leaving the country with a fake Canadian passport.

“I have no way of knowing what would have happened had he not taken us in,” Lijek told the Citizen two years ago when he visited Sheardown to mark the 30th anniversary of his escape from Iran.

Taylor shut down the Canadian Embassy on the same day that the U.S. diplomats were spirited out of the country.

Taylor received the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal for his efforts and was celebrated across the continent, while John and Zena Sheardown were awarded the Order of Canada.

Writing in The Canadian Encyclopedia, Carleton University history professor Norman Hillier said that while Sheardown received some of the credit for the Canadian Caper, he did not get “nearly as much as he deserved.”

Taylor himself has said as much. “John and Zena were very much part of the core of activity in Tehran, but on top of that, John also shouldered a very demanding job as head of the immigration section, which loomed large at the time,” Taylor told the Toronto Star in July 2010.

Sheardown continued to work as a diplomat after the Canadian caper, retiring in 1989.

A Second World War bomber pilot, Sheardown once had to bail out of his crippled plane over Britain. He broke both his legs because he parachuted from such low altitude.

Along with his son Robin, Sheardown is survived by his daughter, Jackie Hunter, his son John Sheardown Jr., his wife Zena, six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. He will be cremated in Ottawa and his ashes interred in his hometown of Windsor.